Skip. (Fiction. 9-11)
Sophie, a 10-year-old with a facial birthmark, sees monsters everywhere she looks—including in the mirror.
Sophie has a hemangioma, a textured birthmark across her face. A frequent victim of bullying, Sophie hides from the world behind sunglasses or her hair. Her mother moves them both from the Portland, Oregon, suburbs to the city, where she hopes specialists will be able to surgically remove Sophie’s birthmark and Sophie can get a fresh start at a new school. The fresh start works, a little. Sophie makes her first friend, a bubbly girl named Autumn. But Sophie’s demons are all too real. Constantly reading her Big Book of Monsters (which mixes monsters and figures from various world cosmologies), Sophie sees creatures everywhere. Most are dangerous but not all: Autumn is obviously a fairy, while Autumn’s Irish herbalist grandmother is a kindly witch. Sophie decides to remove the curse she’s sure has afflicted her, finding ingredients for a magical cure all over Portland while identifying “the ghost of a Native American princess” and “an old Native American man” in passers-by and deciding they’re her magical helpers. The message—that true beauty comes from the inside—is worthy but unremarkable and is ultimately undermined by tired disability tropes. The mishmash of monstrosity and magic with world religions is as unfortunate as the placement of generic Native characters in the service of this white girl; that she has a Latina doctor would be nice except that the highly atypical spelling of her doctor’s surname (“Escabar”) will likely throw Latinx readers.
Skip. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-62972-555-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Shadow Mountain
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
However the compelling fitness of theme and event and the apt but unexpected imagery (the opening sentences compare the...
At a time when death has become an acceptable, even voguish subject in children's fiction, Natalie Babbitt comes through with a stylistic gem about living forever.
Protected Winnie, the ten-year-old heroine, is not immortal, but when she comes upon young Jesse Tuck drinking from a secret spring in her parents' woods, she finds herself involved with a family who, having innocently drunk the same water some 87 years earlier, haven't aged a moment since. Though the mood is delicate, there is no lack of action, with the Tucks (previously suspected of witchcraft) now pursued for kidnapping Winnie; Mae Tuck, the middle aged mother, striking and killing a stranger who is onto their secret and would sell the water; and Winnie taking Mae's place in prison so that the Tucks can get away before she is hanged from the neck until....? Though Babbitt makes the family a sad one, most of their reasons for discontent are circumstantial and there isn't a great deal of wisdom to be gleaned from their fate or Winnie's decision not to share it.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1975
ISBN: 0312369816
Page Count: 164
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1975
SEEN & HEARD
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers.
First volume of a planned three, this edited version of an ongoing online serial records a middle-school everykid’s triumphs and (more often) tribulations through the course of a school year.
Largely through his own fault, mishaps seem to plague Greg at every turn, from the minor freak-outs of finding himself permanently seated in class between two pierced stoners and then being saddled with his mom for a substitute teacher, to being forced to wrestle in gym with a weird classmate who has invited him to view his “secret freckle.” Presented in a mix of legible “hand-lettered” text and lots of simple cartoon illustrations with the punch lines often in dialogue balloons, Greg’s escapades, unwavering self-interest and sardonic commentary are a hoot and a half.
Certain to elicit both gales of giggles and winces of sympathy (not to mention recognition) from young readers. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: April 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-8109-9313-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Amulet/Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
SEEN & HEARD
PERSPECTIVES
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